Contact centres - getting it right

Contact centres represent the most mainstream method of contact between laypeople and organisations of all sizes. More importantly, these contact centres are also in place in order to help companies save money and operate more economically at the same time.

“It is essential that a local contact centre is correctly implemented and managed, especially since South Africa is seen as an important destination for contact centre location by companies based across the globe,” stresses Pommie Lutchman, MD of contact centre technologies and CRM service provider, Ocular Technologies.

However, this is not always the case, with some users reporting mixed experiences - certain contact centres run exceptionally smoothly, while others are highly frustrating, negating the feel-good factor and problem-solving objectives they are supposed to achieve.

“The problem often lies with the most expensive and labour-intensive resource in the contact centre - the staff,” says Lutchman. “Many agents in today's contact centres don't know the basics of contact centre technologies and have no idea how service levels are calculated, the impact arriving late has on the contact centre, or even what the capabilities of the systems they are working on are.

“To better manage this, workforce management and resource planning solutions and teams are critical in reducing the staff overhead. A defined skills development programme for contact centre operators, including agents, supervisors and managers, should allow employees to grow and advance from one level to the next and effectively map out their careers. Voluntary training with the benefit of obtaining official accreditations can further boost contact centre morale and skills development and help to retain staff.”

In addition, Lutchman sees a contact centre technologies support centre as an absolute necessity to provides a link between the operations and IT departments, while at the same time managing functional and contractual obligations with on-site and prospective solution vendors.

“In essence, this provides organisations with an internal resource acting as a 'third party' in evaluating the contact centre on a set of pre-defined parameters, which prevent call centre managers and supervisors from receiving fudged or blurred statistics to make their operations look better than they actually are,” he explains.

“Monitoring and real-time problem and incident management as well as detailed real-time and historical reporting from such a facility allow for prompt response and problem resolution, shortened turnaround times on new projects and hold a team accountable. In large contact centres, workforce management solutions, which include forecasting, tracking and scheduling, play a big role in making a top-class contact centre.”

On the technology side, Lutchman deems a true cost reduction exercise in a contact centre as one that takes into account existing infrastructures and processes, and builds on those instead of forklifting and/or replacing them. A typical example would be leveraging an existing TDM voice infrastructure and adding VOIP to complement the existing solution. This way, companies not only save expenses by using a more cost-effective solution, but also reduce overall TCO.

“Strategy defines ROI success - and without a clearly defined strategy on how to implement a solution or process, the calculated ROI cannot be effectively and accurately measured. Specifically with regards to VOIP implementations, a strategy needs to be set out in advance, taking all parameters into consideration and using best practices and processes to fully realise a high ROI,” he concludes.